Svetlana Sterlin & Rae White
Svetlana Sterlin is the author of Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award winning poetry collection, If Movement Was a Language (Vagabond Press), which was Commended in the 2024 Anne Elder Award. A swimming coach and former swimmer, she lives in Meanjin (Brisbane, Australia), where she writes prose, poetry, and screenplays. Her work appears in Westerly , Island , Cordite Poetry Review , Australian Poetry , and has been recognized in the Queensland Literary Awards, Richell Prize, State Library of Queensland Young Writers Award, and others. She is also the founding editor of swim meet lit mag .
Rae White is a queer non-binary transgender writer, and author of poetry collections Milk Teeth (UQP 2018) and Exactly As I Am (UQP 2022). Rae was awarded the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize in 2017, and has been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, Queensland Literary Awards, and Victorian Premier's Literary Awards. Their debut picture book All the Colours of the Rainbow (Lothian Children’s Books/Hachette), with illustrations by Sha’an d’Anthes, was published in January 2025. Rae is the Creative Director and Founder of Uplift Poetry, a community poetry initiative; the Founding Editor of #EnbyLife , a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives; and a co-host on the 4ZZZ radio show Tranzmission.
